iControl Management

The iControl management team consists of seasoned professionals who have founded, led, or worked for consumer electronics firms, telecommunication and software companies, and online services over the past 25 years.

Paul Dawes - Chief Executive Officer

Paul has spent 20 years in Silicon Valley creating, managing, and selling high-tech products and services. He has led sales teams in the broadband, enterprise and entertainment markets, and driven product management for both embedded systems and enterprise. Most recently, Paul was a partner at Lockwood Capital, a technology investment team where he held the role of SVP, Worldwide Sales & Marketing for Liberate Technologies and helped drive the sale of Liberate to Comcast and Cox. Paul also led the sales team that closed deals with the largest US cable operators, enabling Liberate's 1999 IPO.

Prior to Liberate, Paul was VP, Sales & Marketing for VerdiSoft, a mobile software provider that has become the foundation of Yahoo's Connected Life division (2005 acquisition). Earlier, Paul held product and business development roles at Gain Technologies, Tom Siebel's multimedia software company (1997 Sybase purchase). Paul started his career in software engineering, product marketing and sales at Integrated Systems, Inc., an embedded systems company (1990 IPO).

Paul holds a BSME degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MSME from Stanford University.

Reza Raji - Founder, Chairman and Chief Strategy Officer

Reza founded iControl Networks in 2003 and drives the overall product and business strategy. Prior to iControl, Reza was the Director of Business Development at Echelon Corporation, a leading control, automation, security and smart energy company with over 100 million smart devices deployed globally. He joined the company in 1991 as one of the early employees and was instrumental in its first product launch, growth of the customer base to over 4,000, reaching profitability and IPO in 1998. Prior to Echelon, Reza worked at IBM for four years as a development engineer as well as a member of an IBM Fellow group.


Reza has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Consumer Electronics Association's Home Networking and IT Division as well as a Founding Board Member of the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) Steering Committee. Reza holds two US patents, 4 UK patents and has 15 pending patent applications. He received a BSEE from State University of New York at Stony Brook and a MSEE from Cornell University.

Chris Stevens - Founder & EVP of Business Development

Chris is a serial entrepreneur and an acknowledged leader in consumer electronics. Until recently, he led the Networked Entertainment Business Unit for Cisco-Linksys, focusing on IPTV, network delivery of content and the Connected Home. He founded pioneering home theater and automation businesses Phoenix Systems in 1976 and AudioAccess in 1987 and PowerFile in 1998. In 1993, Chris was appointed President of Harman/Kardon, leading its transition to digital technology, restoring profitability, and growing the company from $45M to $145 million in sales in 4 years. Chris co-founded CEDIA, the Custom Electronics Design and Installation Association in 1989, serving as President and Board Member and receiving its Founder's and Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Gerry Gutt - Founder & Chief Software Architect

Gerry brings over three decades of telecommunications, computer and networking experience at Rolm/IBM/Siemens and Echelon. Gerry was a major contributor to several successful commercial software packages Echelon used in deploying and managing control networks. He designed the custom remote object model used by Echelon's principal network management tool, and personally developed and introduced both Echelon's first internet product and its first Windows based product.

Marc Baum - Senior Vice President of Deployments

Marc brings over 20 years of experience in enterprise product development, technical leadership, and business operations. At iControl, Marc is in charge of delivery and deployment of the ConnectedLife solution to customers, responsible for product and customer management, operations, and hosted services. Marc comes to iControl from Supply Chain Alliance (SCA), Inc., a provider of supply chain management solutions for global technology companies, where he held positions of chief technology officer and director of technical services. Prior to SCA, Marc served as the vice president of engineering and operations at Semagix, Inc., an enterprise software solutions provider. Before joining Semagix, Marc served as vice president of product development and customer service for Audiohighway, Inc., where he helped pioneer the emerging online media distribution market.

Earlier in his career, Marc held senior management and executive positions with Voquette, 3COM/U.S. Robotics, and Zenith Electronics. Marc holds six US patents. He received a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois.

Corey Gates - Vice President of Engineering

A true Silicon Valley engineering veteran, Corey has over 18 years of both hardware and software systems development experience in managing full product lifecycles from inception to market availability. Prior to iControl, Corey co-founded Essentel, a telecommunications technology company, where he was the Chief Technology Officer developing voice solutions for the mobile phone industry. Earlier, Corey co-founded AudioTalk Networks and, as Vice President of Technology, was responsible for technology and system architecture development that helped position the company for purchase by HearMe. He also had operational and engineering roles at First Virtual Communications, SharedVision Technology and Creative Labs.

Corey received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Letha McLaren - Vice President of Energy Products

Letha has spent almost 12 years in the energy industry dealing directly with utilities in the area of smart grid solutions. Letha came to iControl from Landis+Gyr (formally The Bayard Group), a leading smart metering and energy management solutions provider, where she was the General Manager of Energy Management and Applications.

Prior to this role, Letha was the Director of Software Product Management at Cellnet Technology, the leading automated meter reading services provider who was acquired by The Bayard Group/Landis+Gyr. She also held product management and software design engineering roles at Schlumberger for their utility-focused automated metering division.

Letha has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Tech in Marietta, GA and a Global MBA from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA.

Greg Roberts - Vice President of Marketing

Greg has over 20 years of consumer marketing, brand and advertising experience. Greg came to iControl from Helio where he was the vice president of marketing strategy responsible for brand management, customer acquisition and retention marketing initiatives. Prior to Helio, Greg served as the vice president of marketing for Disney Mobile and was the director of national marketing at Cingular Wireless (now AT&T).

Greg also spent over eight years in the advertising agency industry at The Richards Group, DDB Needham and GSD&M. Greg received his M.A. degree in Communications from Michigan State University and his B.B.A. degree from the University of North Texas.